Latest Articles
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Slim Pickins, Whitman
In an apparent effort to diffuse criticism from environmentalists, the Bush administration is considering stepping up legal action against some polluting utility companies. U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman has ordered the agency’s regional enforcement officials to look for companies that have violated the Clean Air Act by upgrading power plants without installing state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment, […]
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Smokin’ Reefer
Move over, Great Barrier Reef: Coral researchers recently discovered what they think is the most valuable reef cluster in the world. Known collectively as Raja Ampat, the reefs are located in a remote archipelago off the coast of Indonesia. In the course of a two-and-a-half week expedition there, a survey team recorded 972 species — […]
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Mozam-piqued
Mozambique has decided to proceed with a $520 million plan to build a harbor and industrial free-trade zone on its pristine southern coast, a decision that has outraged environmentalists. The plan seems likely to put an end to efforts to establish a transnational conservation area stretching from St. Lucia in South Africa through Swaziland and […]
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Shaft!
The cost of closing and cleaning up old and abandoned mines around the world likely runs into the trillions of dollars, an amount that is far beyond anything mining companies can handle on their own, according to Robert Wilson, chair of the metals giant Rio Tinto. Wilson, who made his comments during a mining industry […]
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The Hunt for Cold October
That’s all fine and dandy for panda bears, but the outlook is grimmer for their northern (non)cousins, polar bears. Polar bears face a number of threats — widespread habitat fragmentation, pollution, excessive hunting — but the most serious menace of all is climate change, according to a report issued yesterday by the World Wildlife Fund. […]
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Barking Up the Right Tree
Apparently spooked by a recent history of devastating floods and blinding sandstorms, China has unveiled a plan to plant trees on almost 200,000 square miles of land in an effort to reverse rampant deforestation. The plan, which Chinese officials call the largest conservation effort ever attempted, will cost an estimated $12 billion over 10 years […]
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Fresh Air
For the first time ever, California’s agriculture sector — the biggest industry in the state — will be required to comply with the federal Clean Air Act, following a settlement reached yesterday by the U.S. EPA and environmental and health advocates. Since 1976, the sector has enjoyed exemptions from some of the act’s most important […]
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Smells Like Team Spirit
Imagine a Tupperware party, but for the tree-hugging set. That’s the vision, sort of, of Global Action Plan, a nonprofit organization that is promoting the formation of EcoTeams, grassroots groups dedicated to helping neighbors create sustainable lifestyles and livable communities. The teams, which are currently in eight cities around the country, meet every other week […]
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Ec-static!
The newspapers aren’t covering it, but we just had to: An environmental organization has garnered second prize in a competition for the world’s best television ads. “Static Electricity House,” a public service announcement by the Alliance to Save Energy, features a family trying to deal with the, uh, shock of big electricity bills by powering […]
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Gregory Gipson reviews Edward Abbey: A Life by James Cahalan
Writing a biography of an author can be a challenging task -- how much do you write about the subject's life, how much about the work? -- and reviewing such a biography even more so. That is especially the case when the subject of the biography is Edward Abbey, who wanted to be a novelist but wrote himself into several identities, among them wilderness Jeremiah and curmudgeonly cowboy. Abbey regularly complained that reviewers wrote too much about him and not enough about his books, a criticism that could be aptly applied to James Cahalan's new biography, Edward Abbey: A Life.
